At HikingBoots.com headquarters this week, we served up a birthday dirt cake for one happy programmer. He requested such a cake for his 34th birthday, which is pretty awesome. While inhaling the chocolate “dirt,” another coworker commented: “This is a perfect hiking cake.”

In a forehead-smacking moment, we snapped a picture of the delicious masterpiece *after* it was almost devoured. We decided to investigate what other Mother Earth-inspired cakes were floating around the interwebs.

1. Dirt Cake – Made with egg whites and applesauce (instead of oil) to cut out some fat, the healthy version of the classic “dirt” cake uses low-fat chocolate wafers to get that earthy look. Most of the cake is missing due to lack of foresight and an uncontrollable appetite.

2. Hiking Boot Cake – Created from sponge cake, this chocolate-brown boot definitely has a kick to it. Wonder if those laces would be difficult to digest?

3. Wedding Cake – Ah, love takes us to such great heights. Are those husband-and-wife figurines edible or what?

4. Cartographer’s Cake – This mountainous invention came from a love of map making and hiking. According to its Flickr page, the red lines are real trails in the area that all to scale. Talk about attention to detail!

5. The Drive-by – This looks like a hiking cake for the lazy. Not that it isn’t elaborate, because it really, really is. However, we imagine that person in the cherry-red car isn’t getting much of a workout.

6. Tramping Cake – What is tramping, you ask? Well, it’s New Zealand’s term for hiking. They call a hiker a tramper. Expedition groups are called tramping clubs. And since this cake was made by a New Zealander, it’s a tramping cake. Yum.

7. Hiking Partners – Just looking at this thing has our mouth watering—layers of chocolate and vanilla cake teeming with chocolate buttercream and marshmallow fondant. Oh la la.

8. Rock Climbing with Fairies – Spotting fairies on a hike is a rarity at best. Discovering a cake with such attributes, not so much.

9. 40th Birthday – Can you tell that the mounds of darker chocolate say “40″? It took us a minute, too.

10. Woodland Chocolate Cake – Chocolate fudge, whipped bittersweet ganache, chocolate meringue buttercream, handmade cocoa-dusted meringue mushrooms. Mmmm. All for a couple training for an Appalachian Trail hike. What a peculiar yet fabulous way to prep!

(Images via cakecorner, laurenfriendman, WhatsCakin.com, Reesed.com, 4GoodnessCake!, tesorocookies, jgosche, benkimball1, sweetsbyzoe)